About the artist:

Born in London, Timothy Cole became one of the most sought after wood engravers* in the publishing industry. His reputation for exactness and range of his subject matter led him to being credited as "the last master of a dying art form." However, photographic reproduction later negated the demand for artists with engraving skills. He came to the U.S. at age five, and was apprenticed in Chicago to a commercial wood engraving firm, Bond and Chandler. But he left the city in 1871 because his work and possessions had been destroyed in the city's Great Fire. In New York he did freelance engraving, and between 1875 to 1915 had contract work with Charles Scribner & Sons, worked as a magazine engraver. Among artists whose work he engraved were James Whistler, Abbott Thayer, Winslow Homer and George Inness. By 1883 when he was age 31, he was so proficient in reproducing Old Master* paintings that Scribner's sent him to Europe to do a series of Old Master engravings for publication in Century Magazine*. He stayed abroad for 28 years, completing the project and living six years in Spain, four in France, ten in Italy and four in Holland The reproductions he sent back are credited as playing a significant part in establishing Century as a leading, prestigious art magazine. In his person life, he lived a reveling existence as a bon vivant and pioneering nudest. Source: Askart.com provided by David Dearinger, Editor, Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design